Chapter Text
What is a ‘God’?
Some define gods as entities of immeasurable power, strength unbounded by the limits of human imagination. Others believe them to be the architects of existence, sovereigns who fashioned earth and decreed the laws of life. There are also others who perceive them as abstractions given form, the personification of concepts, sometimes embodiments of nature’s forces—unfeeling and unfathomable.
Gods, Kim Soleum thinks, are simply beings who have loved too much.
To a young and cherished child, his mother is a god. Beyond her strength, which dwarfs his own, she defines his entire world. She commands the order of his days, decrees bedtime, reveals new wonders, foretells the coming of rain and then slips his arms into a coat before he can understand why.
Yet, to him she is also an impossible paradox: at once the centre of his universe and, in her unreasonability, ‘indifference’ (though he might still not know that word) to his small but passionate sorrows, a distant figure beyond reach. What seems to her and many others as maturity feels to him like divine coldness.
The mother loves her child to a fault. She loves even when she must deny, against her better judgement, even when reason insists that she should not yield. Her knowledge tells her the child is mistaken, yet her heart aches at his tears. An irrational conclusion to a simple problem, derived only by love, but a mother is only a mother if she has loved. Regardless of blood that does or does not bind them together, motherhood itself is nothing without love.
The mother is a god because she has loved.
So is the girl who rescues a broken-winged finch, refusing to let it perish and restoring it to the sky. So is the man to his loyal dog, who witnesses him down a deer through strange, thunderous means and then shares its flesh with him.
So too is the man who tends to a crumbling world no one else remembers, keeping it alive with nothing but his relentless devotion to its story.
So, there was once a lonely god who loved to read.
There had once been many gods, though for reasons lost to memory they departed, one by one. What had once been a vibrant community became only a solitary figure, Kim Soleum, wandering through the desolate halls of the [Darkness Exploration Records] archive, endlessly browsing through the desolate remnants of a wiki once dearly loved.
He would re-read words penned by countless hands now silent, works that had once been playful, spontaneous, even frivolous, but which had hardened into scripture in his eyes. What had begun as a pastime, a community name shared amongst like-minded archivists, Ireum, had ironically become his creed. Day after day, he devoted himself to the words, as though to abandon them would be sacrilege.
There was nothing else he could do, anyways.
Soleum was no special person. He had never been the one to craft prose that cut, nor a troll who left trails of chaos behind. He was neither brilliant nor infamous. He was simply one of many ordinary editors, conscientious, quiet, unremarkable. Even when he was involved in the birth of a new record, he had not directly created, only sorted the inputs of others into a story that made sense. Kim Soleum simply did his duty, faithfully, and nothing more and nothing less.
In the absence of other things to do, Soleum only found himself falling back into his old ways, reading and cataloguing for eons since the last Ireum had left.
It was not a fault of their kind, the Ireums were not so much a singular species but rather of a multitude. Soleum himself was human, though the occult rituals his companions had put him through to extend his life did not leave much trace of that humanity.
Still, despite having otherworldly features, their kind did not claim themselves to be gods, though to the characters whose stories they collected, they might have appeared so. Which was probably the reason why the truth of [Darkness Exploration Records] often involved ‘Ireum-nim’ and whatnot. It was perhaps more accurate to call them archivists, record-keepers who catalogued the narratives of innumerable worlds for other dimensions to to peruse at their own will.
During the peak of [Darkness Exploration Records], Soleum recalled fondly, their community saw thousands of viewers in hours. The traffic was relentless, the editing a sisyphean task, yet Soleum bore it steadily.
But that golden age had long passed, enthusiasm waned and devotion scattered, the community was pretty much abandoned. One by one, his companions drifted away, some to other archives, more lively and sparkling with novelty, others abandoning the work of record-keeping altogether, no longer entranced by the labyrinthine charms of [Darkness Exploration Records].
In the end, only Kim Soleum remained, the final archivist left to manage everything and the final bastion that kept the [Darkness Exploration Records] standing. Yet even he, steady as he was, could not sustain the archive’s immensity alone. Without visitors or communal effort to generate energy, the great engine of the archive grew heavy and inert. Its systems demanded more energy than a solitary figure could give, and slowly, almost imperceptibly, first the archive’s reserves, then Soleum, was drained.
He allowed the archive to drift into a kind of twilight state, like a phone left on idle mode. The archive had its vast chambers darkened, protective systems powered down. In this dimness, intruders sometimes crept in: scavengers, vandals, strange parasites feeding on abandoned data. Each time, Soleum was forced to rise, to spend what little strength he had in purging them. But he could no longer afford long battles. He shortened the time for cleansing, cut corners, but each expenditure left him thinner, more hollow.
In fact, Soleum was currently preparing for yet another clearance right now. There is no surplus left to draw from, so he has resolved to sacrifice a portion of his own body for the energy required.
A red string is already tied about his thigh, its ends submerged in a pool of mercury. Around him lay other materials of the rite, lacking a human-equivalent in name, but still gifts and what the other archivists had left behind when abandoning the archive to silence.
They were meant to prevent pain and psychological trauma, as for however long Soleum had played the role of god, he was still human beneath it all, fragile as bone, easily broken. Reassured by the presence of this failsafe, Soleum wraps his hand around the red string, ready to pull.
[Mr Silver Sun! Has my prolonged absence really driven you to such extremes?]
…
“Nyarla—”
The word slips from his tongue, but even as it does he stills. To speak the true name of the being before him, in the heart of the archive, would be unwise. Soleum cuts himself short, correcting himself with the title most mortals could bear.
“The Moon Who Shines Golden.”
[My, Mr Silver Sun, no need to be so formal with me. I know my name must be such a mouthful for you!]
So this guy had some self-awareness too.
Still, Soleum could not summon resentment toward Golden Moon. Annoying as his manner was, his arrival had spared Soleum the grisly act of severing his own leg. [Mr Silver Sun, Mr Silver Sun~ Are you ignoring me? After I’ve made all this effort to visit my good friend?]
“How is it difficult,” Soleum deadpans, “when you can just send one of your many avatars to come stay forever…”
[Ahh, but to do so would conceal the true depth of my sincerity!]
Forget it. Soleum would rather accompany the archive to its end and die alone than endure prolonged company with Golden Moon or any of his avatars. He might actually go mad. No, seriously, the moon was associated with madness and lunacy for a reason in the human world.
“…I’m working right now.”
[Oooh, then as a little treat to your friend who has journeyed so far to meet you, you should allow me to watch! I’ll behave—I promise—no interference. I swear it upon my most important mask!]
”If you want, I guess.”
With Golden Moon’s arrival, he had brought along with him some energy as well, which Soleum quickly redirects to the archive’s interface. Pale light begins to trickle through the long-dead panels, and though dusty, runs smoothly. Consoles flicker awake, each awakening like the drawing of breath after a long sleep.
As the systems of the archive stir, so do the anomalies, like fragile wounds reopening the moment one begins to move. Soleum acts at once. His hands strike the controls with unhesitating precision, every movement sharp and exact, as though the interface is an extension of his own body.
There is an anomaly blooming across a corridor of text: a sentence folding back onto itself, coiling into an endless loop. Soleum’s fingers snap across the interface, and the loop unravels, words uncoiling, smoothing back into linear sense before the page could collapse into itself.
Elsewhere, a silhouette has pressed itself between two paragraphs, faceless, lingering, threatening to turn the margin into its home. Soleum’s hand cuts a clean line through the display, and the figure dissolves into static before vanishing entirely. He does not pause to check again. His eyes are already elsewhere.
A pool of ink bleeds slowly from a story’s edge, staining neighbouring pages. The ink freezes when Soleum brushes his palm across the console, then rolls back, word by word, until the narrative’s boundaries are sealed once more. For a moment he lingers, tracing the repaired line with his eyes, as if to confirm its pulse had returned. Then he moves on.
(His movements are stripped of flourish, yet held a beauty in their clarity, like calligraphy in motion: efficient, unerring, swift. Still, there is some part in Soleum who mourns that he cannot view his work in the once-brilliant light of the archive, but he represses it without second thought. He moves on, just like how all the other archivists had moved on.)
With unfaltering pace, he leaps from one record to another, clearing distortions before they can root themselves. The work demanded speed, demanded reflexes sharper than thought, but to Soleum, who had been doing such for eons, you may as well just ask him to close his eyes too.
Smoothing a corrupted phrase back into place, he brushes his thumb against the panel as though patting down a child’s unruly hair. Erasing a false laugh echoing in a solemn tragedy, his gaze softens briefly, almost apologetically, before pressing on.
All around, the anomalies collapsed into order under Soleum’s hands. One by one, the wounds of the archive closed.
In the corner of the chamber, Golden Moon leans against a darkened pillar. He did not interrupt, nor shift his weight, nor even blink (not that he needed to), true to his word. He simply observes. The archivist who so often appeared weary, drained, precarious, now shines in a different light. In the rhythm of his labour, in the speed of his mind and the steadiness of his hand, The Sun Who Burned Silver possessed a kind of radiance: not the glare of power, but the glow of devotion.
Golden Moon’s grin curves wider, though it holds no mockery.
How admirable, he thinks, that a fragile human could wield such grace. It was just such a shame, such an unfortunate circumstance, that bent over his work and in focus, Soleum never once looked his way.
“And… done.” Soleum exhales through his nose, a sense of muted satisfaction washing over him, having felt the small weight of duty done. His hand hovers over the console for a moment longer before withdrawing. The interface’s panels dims, systems humming down to idle, a giant falling back into slumber again.
It was like greeting an old friend goodbye, and never knowing when their next meeting was.
In the corner, he spies Golden Moon's unmoving frame. His mask was fixed as always, but there was something in the stillness of his posture that unsettled Soleum. Normally, by now, there would have been a cascade of commentary: complaints about how boring watching was, comparisons to human theatre, some ludicrous suggestion about how Soleum should decorate the archive corridors with flowers or paint. And yet, none of it came.
The silence scrapes at him. Irritation wins out.
“…What’s with you?” Soleum asks at last, not looking up.
Golden Moon tilts his head, stars shifting faintly.
[Me? What’s with you, Mr Silver Sun?]
“It…”
!
The word had somehow slipped from him, even when the question should have been easy to ignore. Soleum knew better than to answer questions from him. Yet somehow, against his own judgement, the words left him.
[Hm?] Golden Moon leaves his brooding corner and approaches Soleum at his seat. He tilts his head down to the man. [Don’t keep an old pal waiting, alright?]
“…It’s unsustainable. Depending on your visits to wake the system.” Soleum flexes his hand once, the phantom memory of the red string taut around his thigh. “The archive needs more than stopgaps.”
“I’ve been considering… starting something new. Not merely keeping records, not waiting for others to leave their words behind.” His voice slows, weight settling into it. “This time, I’ll write. Create a story that draws them back. That draws new visitors. Enough to keep the wiki alive.”
For the first time in eons, the lone archivist allowed himself a spark of ambition. He had been observing the patterns, the trends that kept younger visitors enthralled. Transmigration tales, heroes waking in strange bodies or stranger worlds, but most of all, the suffering of the main character, having the world against them. As long as they pulled eyes, Soleum was willing to do anything and everything. Eyes meant life.
Golden Moon’s eyes light with sudden delight.
[Ohhh! So you would enter the world of [Darkness Exploration Records] itself, yes? A vacation at last?]
“No,” Soleum says flatly. “For work.”
[But friend! I have not yet frolicked in the fields with you, nor watched cartoon shows with you, nor—]
“I.” Soleum briefly wonders if he would regret it, “suppose I could come and visit one of the avatars you have left in [Darkness Exploration Records].”
[!] Golden Moon’s imaginary ahoge strikes into the air!
Voice filled glee and anticipation, Golden Moon can’t resist bending over and asking, [So, dearest Silver Sun, what exactly are you planning to do?]
Soleum stares at the arms planted around him, “I was thinking of sealing my memories, and then sending my incarnation in the world of [Darkness Exploration Records].”
“I think I may find myself in Daydream at first, and while I do dislike the company, this would only serve as an obstacle I would have to overcome which would keep readers hooked.”
“I want to explore all of the stories that were beloved by my friends. And I also want to work at the Supernatural Disaster Management Agency… Basically, I have a lot of ideas.” Soleum pauses. “That I have recorded and reviewed here.”
Said here was a thick stack of paper, Golden Moon observed kindly, Mr Silver Sun was really letting his inner fanboy shine through, huh. Whole columns of speculative premises, arrows connecting arcs, diagrams that only an archivist could conceive.
Soleum feels annoyed. Golden Moon’s expression, despite being an unmoving mask, struck a nerve within him, as did his ensuing laughter.
[Ohhh, so diligent! So terribly thorough! You’re just like a schoolboy who has memorised the entire textbook before class has begun.] His words danced, but the edge was fond.
Soleum flicks a finger across the stack, aligning the corners with a practiced motion. “Preparation is the difference between collapse and continuity. I will not stumble.”
[Yet you would seal your memories,] Golden Moon’s tone softens, [and willingly risk losing your self?]
“That is the point.” Soleum’s eyes lingers on the stack of paper. “A story must live. And living requires uncertainty, struggle, discovery. My knowledge of the truth, the true truth, would hollow the journey before it begins. Better to walk blind, as any reader would. Even better to feed them a false truth so that the real one hits harder.”
[Mm… so very ‘in-the-box’. Not a lot of breaking boundaries.] Yet, Golden Moon grins wide enough to split his face. [Still, I think I like this new spark in you. A Silver Sun who dreams like a child.]
Soleum ignores the taunt. “The younger visitors do not want only chronicles of what has already been. They want the promise of becoming. If I must become a character to save the archive, then so be it.”
Golden Moon claps his hands, delighted beyond reason. [Magnificent! I can already see it: my solemn, stone-faced friend stumbling into Daydream, chased by nuisances, cornered by melodrama, forced to learn the language of joy. It will be hilarious—no, transcendent!]
“…You make it sound idiotic.”
[Yes, yes, precisely! Idiotic. Brilliant. Human. That’s what they want.]
Soleum’s lips thin, but he does not argue. Even in the scorching shame of being ridiculed by Golden Moon, the faintest, most dangerous flicker of warmth in his chest burned hotter.
Have you ever had an experience where you became totally engrossed in something?
I’m not just talking about thinking, ‘Oh, this is fun,’ but being so deeply impressed that you ended up spending extra time and money on it.
There must be something like that, right?
If it’s a movie, watching the director’s cut. If it’s a game, buying the artbook. If it’s a webtoon, paying for early access. If it’s a singer, going to their concert…
Going a bit further, buying related merchandise could be another example.
Yes, there was once a lonely god who loved to read.